Tue 8 Sep 2009
You can’t go wrong with any of these. One of them, in fact is among my top five favorite movies of all time, The Narrow Margin. If you haven’t seen it, don’t miss it if at all possible.
6:00 AM They Live by Night (1949)
After an unjust prison sentence, a young innocent gets mixed-up with hardened criminals and a violent escape. Cast: Farley Granger, Cathy O’Donnell, Howard da Silva. Dir: Nicholas Ray. BW-96 mins, TV-PG, CC
7:45 AM Mystery Street (1950)
Criminal pathologists try to crack a case with nothing but the victim’s bones to go on. Cast: Ricardo Montalban, Sally Forrest, Elsa Lanchester. Dir: John Sturges. BW-93 mins, TV-PG, CC
9:30 AM Tension (1950)
A man who had planned to murder his wife’s lover becomes the prime suspect when somebody beats him to it. Cast: Richard Basehart, Audrey Totter, Barry Sullivan. Dir: John Berry. BW-91 mins, TV-PG, CC
11:15 AM Dial 1119 (1950)
A killer holds the customers at a bar hostage. Cast: Marshall Thompson, Virginia Field, Sam Levene. Dir: Gerald Mayer. BW-75 mins, TV-G
12:45 PM Cause For Alarm (1951)
A woman fights to intercept a letter in which her husband tries to prove her guilty of murder. Cast: Loretta Young, Barry Sullivan, Bruce Cowling. Dir: Tay Garnett. BW-74 mins, TV-PG, CC
2:00 PM No Questions Asked (1951)
A young lawyer’s primrose path to success gets him framed for murder. Cast: Barry Sullivan, George Murphy, Arlene Dahl. Dir: Harold F. Kress. BW-81 mins, TV-PG
3:30 PM Narrow Margin, The (1952)
A tough cop meets his match when he has to guard a gangster’s moll on a tense train ride. Cast: Charles McGraw, Marie Windsor, Jacqueline White. Dir: Richard Fleischer. BW-72 mins, TV-PG, CC
4:45 PM While The City Sleeps (1956)
Reporters compete to catch a serial killer. Cast: Dana Andrews, Ida Lupino, Vincent Price. Dir: Fritz Lang. BW-100 mins, TV-PG, CC
6:30 PM Nowhere To Go (1958)
A burglar on the run holes up with an innocent English girl. Cast: George Nader, Maggie Smith, Bernard Lee. Dir: Seth Holt. BW-87 mins, TV-G, Letterbox Format
8:00 PM Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)
A prizefighter who died before his time is reincarnated as a tycoon with a murderous wife. Cast: Robert Montgomery, Evelyn Keyes, Claude Rains. Dir: Alexander Hall. BW-94 mins, TV-G, CC
9:45 PM Angel On My Shoulder (1946)
The Devil sends a murdered gangster to Earth as a respected judge. Cast: Paul Muni, Anne Baxter, Claude Rains. Dir: Archie Mayo. BW-101 mins, TV-PG, CC
September 8th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
I agree about THE NARROW MARGIN. Out of the 11 movies listed above I would say it is my favorite also. Charles McGraw was one of the best character actors and he had a great voice and a menacing stare. His best parts were usually playing the villain but in this movie he is a cop. Most of it takes place on a train with the great Marie Windsor as company.
Also of great interest is WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS, but as Steve says, you can’t go wrong with any of these.
September 8th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
I hope I have room on my DVR for this bunch.
September 8th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
I agree about The Narrow Margin and While the City Sleeps (great performances by Vincent Price, Thomas Mitchell, Ida Lupino, and George Sanders), but some other gems here.
They Live By Night is based on Edward Anderson’s classic novel Thieves Like Us (remade under that name by Robert Altman). Mystery Street is an underrated little noir with good performances from Ricardo Montalban and Bruce Bennett, and Else Lanchester.
No Questions Asked written by Sidney Sheldon is a slick old fashioned crime drama with some nice touches. Watch out for the cross dressing hold up men. Handsomely mounted film with a few offbeat touches that give it a bit of an edge, and an outstanding cast.
Dial 1119 is a fair cheaply made suspenser with a good central performance by Marshall Thompson.
Here Comes Mr. Jordan is one of the best fantasy comedies ever made with Claude Rains classic turn as Mr. Jordan, and fine playing by Robert Montgomery and James Gleason — I think it stands out far above it’s remake as Waren Beatty’s Heaven Can Wait (which was damn good too). Angel on My Shoulder isn’t quite as good, and some prints are awful, but Rains is good as the Devil and Muni at least has fun overacting as the bad guy who gradually goes good thanks to love.
September 8th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Patti —
Make Room! Make Room!
I don’t use our downstairs DVR for anything I think I might want to keep. I’ll be using the upstairs VCR for tomorrow’s offerings — less the ones I’ve already taped, of course.
And one day — one day! — I’ll start transferring the contents of my 100s of video tapes to DVDs. The ones stacked in the far back of my closet go back to when American Movie Classics just started, and some are even older than that, when many of the local channels were still showing one or two films overnight. They’ll have commercials still in them, of course, but I have a hunch that some of these older movies are fairly hard to find otherwise.
September 8th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
PS. Since no one else has mentioned it, let me suggest that TENSION is a movie well worth watching also. Very noir-ish, and it features Audrey Totter at her trampiest, Cyd Charisse at her most innocent best, and William Conrad (as Police Lt. Edgar ‘Blackie’ Gonsales) at his scene-stealing finest.
Need more? Richard Basehart as the meek druggist who’s married to Audrey Totter but can’t hold her is awfully good, too.
September 8th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Concerning comment #4 where Steve says he will eventually transfer the hundreds of video tapes to dvds, I don’t believe this will ever happen. Like me, he has been threatening to do this for years. In my case not only do I have the hundreds of VHS tapes but I have the hundreds of BETA tapes also, all going back as far as 1980.
It will simply be too time consuming to try and do this enormous project plus I’m getting too damn old anyway. Steve is still young but I’m running out of time. Since I still have workable BETA and VHS tape recorders, I can still play the tapes. When I give up the ghost, then my family can happily throw out the tapes and tape recorders, along with me.
September 8th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Yeah, TENSION’s quite nice, and someone should mention that WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS was the 2nd movie about People scrambling around the empire of a newly-dead publisher whose initial was K.
September 8th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Ironically Dana Andrews and George Sanders did another newspaper flick together in this same period, this one also set at a wire service, this one in Paris with Andrews the correspondent sent behind the Iron Curtain who finds himself arrested and tried as a spy, Assignment Paris, based on a novel by Paul Gallico (Trial By Terror).
In that one he and Sanders are reporter and editor, friendly rivals for a female reporter, who become entangled in a plot to capture a defector living in Paris.
I’ve transferred quite a bit of my VHS collection to DVD, but to be honest mostly things that I can’t get anywhere else. Much of the other stuff I just wait to show up somewhere and record on DVD first generation, and somethings are likely going to stay on VHS — I’ve still got a working CED player, and quite a few of those!
And of course there are always those film on the wish list still hard to find, like Mann’s Dr. Broadway, Mamoulian’s City Streets, or Letterier’s Un Roi Sans Diversement.
September 8th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
HERE COMES MR> JORDAN is the only one I’ve seen. I just deleted THE BRIDE WORE BLACK, God help me.
September 8th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
It sounds as though your DVR needs an expansion chip, Patti!
I messed up over the holiday weekend and ended up being too late to give an alert for today’s offerings, but I gave my VCR a workout this morning also:
6:00 AM Off The Record (1939)
A lady reporter adopts the young delinquent her crime exposes helped send to jail. Cast: Pat O’Brien, Joan Blondell, Bobby Jordan. Dir: James Flood. BW-71 mins, TV-G
7:15 AM Three Girls About Town (1941)
Sisters working at a hotel try to hide a dead body before the next convention arrives. Cast: Joan Blondell, Robert Benchley, Binnie Barnes. Dir: Leigh Jason. BW-73 mins, TV-G
8:45 AM There’s Always a Woman (1938)
While working on a simple case, married private eyes uncover a murder. Cast: Joan Blondell, Melvyn Douglas, Mary Astor. Dir: Alexander Hall. BW-81 mins, TV-G
10:15 AM Amazing Mr. Williams, The (1939)
The mayor’s secretary competes with her homicide detective fiancé’s devotion to his job. Cast: Melvyn Douglas, Joan Blondell, Clarence Kolb. Dir: Alexander Hall. BW-85 mins, TV-G
11:45 AM Good Girls Go to Paris (1939)
An English professor helps a waitress take a dream vacation in Paris. Cast: Melvyn Douglas, Joan Blondell, Alan Curtis. Dir: Alexander Hall. BW-77 mins, TV-G
1:15 PM Clay Pigeon, The (1949)
A man awakens from a coma to discover he’s accused of treason. Cast: Bill Williams, Barbara Hale, Richard Quine. Dir: Richard Fleischer. BW-63 mins, TV-PG
2:30 PM Slight Case Of Murder, A (1938)
A gangster finds the straight life ain’t so simple. Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Jane Bryan, Allen Jenkins. Dir: Lloyd Bacon. BW-85 mins, TV-G, CC
I was out of the house when my six-hour tape ran out, so I missed the good girls who went to Paris. The rest of the afternoon’s lineup I already have, either on tape or those new-fangled DVDs.
— Steve
September 9th, 2009 at 4:04 am
Nowhere to Go was based on a novel by Donald Mackenzie, a Brit writer who later wrote about an ex Yard man, John Raven. Mackenzie himself was an ex con, a second story man, who turned successful thriller writer, and had a long career.
The film is good, with a nice performance by Nader.
Tension in tailor made for the kind of character Richard Basehart played so well.
Watch for Carl ‘Alfalfa’ Switzer in Cause for Alarm. Nice villainous bit by Barry Sullivan doing a Robert Ryan bit. Tay Garnett is an underrated director — but then several of these films fall into the underrated category.
Not trying to be insulting here, but you guys do know you can transfer recorded shows from your DVR to recordable DVD and VHS, and most DVR’s should hold hundreds of hours?
They aren’t designed to store films on, just for managing your time, and recording later. With some setups you can record one, watch another, and then download to your VCR or DVD recorder while watching something else.
September 9th, 2009 at 9:28 am
I don’t know about the rest of the country, but if you use our cable company’s DVR’s, it’s sure not easy to attach any other equipment. We have a VCR hooked in with ours, for example, but in Play mode only, not record.
We asked the technician from Cox who set up the DVR box about using the VCR to record, and he said, why would you want to do that?
A friend of mine, who lives a couple of towns over, insisted, as I recall, and the cable guy was there all afternoon, trying to figure it out.
It’s only upstairs, where we have non-DVD cable hookup, that we have a VCR that we’re able to use for taping movies.
As for 100’s of hours on a DVR recorder, true, but early on with ours, my wife set it to record all MONK’s and PSYCH’s, a couple of her favorite shows, and in less than a week, everything else we’d saved had disappeared.
We know better now.
Anyway, David, we who are the most adversely technically challenged aren’t insulted! We know who we are, and sometime you can come over and figure out this unholy mess of cables and cords under our computer desks too.
— Steve
September 9th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Steve,
I had a Cox DVR and it is no real problem to record from the DVR. Granted the Cox installation guy isn’t always the best to ask, but unless they have changed in the last six months there is a buit in function in the Cox DVR to copy to your VCR or DVD recorder, especailly if you have a TV with multiple video/audio inputs (more limited if you just have the one input on the TV).
Try talking to a tech guy at a Best Buy or other such place. Tell them the type of set and vcr and DVR (they’ll be familiar with it). You may have to buy some cables and maybe a splitter, but you should be able to do this. Believe me, I’m not that savvy technically.
Re the Monk and Psych thing, you can refine your record defintion on a Cox DVR so you only record one new episode of a program every week, and not every episode shown, and even then you can delete shows easily — literally at the touch of a button. Try calling Cox and talking to a tech rep (the installation guys don’t always know much of anything). Explain your problem and what you want to do. I know it can be done, I’ve done it. I had the Cox DVR, a DVD recorder, and another DVD player all hooked up on my TV on separate inputs, and could record and watch or even play DVDs at the same time, so it can be done.
The Cox DVR can send separate signals to a VHS and the TV so you can watch something else while recording in most instances (though usually not with On Demand).
Many new sets have four inputs or even five if they are HD. There should be A and B inputs, a TV input, a YPbPr input, and maybe S-Video or HD cable, and your DVR has connections for all of those.
But you have to watch and record programs. You can’t just let them pile up without doing that. There should also be a management program on the Cox DVR where you can choose how long you store a program before deleting it. Unless I was going to be away I always had series I wasn’t making a DVD of erase after two or three weeks automatically. Now days they have usually repeated by then anyway.
Don’t let this stuff intimidate you. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, once you figure it out it’s not that hard to piece together.
September 9th, 2009 at 11:39 am
David
“…some cables and maybe a splitter…”
Been there, done that. Other than never saying never, I’m going to say never again.
“… there should be A and B inputs, a TV input, a YPbPr input, and maybe S-Video or HD cable …”
Now you’re talking my kind of language.
Not!
All seriousness aside, thanks for the input (pun intended). I am going to look into this. Really!
First things first, though. Walker has already challenged me on my promise to start transferring videos to DVDs, and I can’t back down now.
September 9th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
I learned this by trial and error, and found you can usually do what you want to do and the cable installation guy only knows how to do the simplest most direct hookup (the last one I had out didn’t know you could do some of the stuff I was doing, like having the DVD recorder receiving a basic cable signal separate from the full cable the TV was on so I could watch basic while recording premium on the DVR). He knows how to install the DVR, hook up the cable, but beyond that he is not your guy. Even the tech guy at Cox may not be a lot of help.
You need a nerd, and most computer and TV places will have one who you can talk to. If worst comes to worst, pay a nerd to hook it up for you, then photograph the set up so you can do it yourself later. I know it can be frustrating and after a while all the cables start to look like cobra clones, but just knowing it can be done is encouraging.
It’s a bit like the PC. There was a time all I could do was spell check my word processor and maybe scan an image in. Now I have the thing reading what I write and books I download back to me. I don’t pretend to know how — just follow the yellow brick road and eventually you get to the Emerald City — but that’s a horse of a different color …
September 9th, 2009 at 11:10 pm
Watched WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS for about the third time and again was impressed by the cast. Directed by Fritz Lang with Dana Andrews, George Sanders, Vincent Price, Ida Lupino, Howard Duff, Thomas Mitchell, and Rhonda Fleming. Not to mention James Craig and Sally Forrest. Very impressive newspaper film.
NOWHERE TO GO was the only one I had not seen previously and I was also impressed with this downbeat example of British film noir. Just about everything goes wrong for noir protagonist, George Nader.
September 10th, 2009 at 12:43 am
NOWHERE TO GO was the dark horse in this race for me also, the big sleeper in the pack, if you will.
I haven’t watched it yet, Walker, but with good recommendations from both you and David, it’s going to go high on my list of those to see next.
— Steve
September 10th, 2009 at 5:22 am
Speaking of VHS tapes, another friend of mine mentioned recently that he was going to dispose of his VCR and get rid of his video tapes. Alot of collectors don’t even bother to transfer to dvd.
I bring this up because there is still some excellent movies that are only available on VHS and if you throw away your tape machine then you will be doing without or having to depend on the bootleg dvd market, which can be risky, as I now and then find out.
A case in point is CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS, an excellent film noir that is only available on VHS. Starring Gig Young as a cop beset by problems, his wife is played by Paula Raymond. I just watched this tape again recently and was reminded that Paula Raymond was WEIRD TALES editor Farnsworth Wright’s grandaughter. Now there is a great pulp connection!
September 10th, 2009 at 6:23 am
City That Never Sleeps is a great noir. I love Chill Wills as the ‘voice of Chicago’ and good villainy from William Talman and Edward Arnold.
And I agree about keeping a VHS player for exactly the reason Walker mentions. But then, as I said, I still have a CED player, so I may not be the best person to ask.
And it is hard to beat a Weird Tales connection. My favorite pulp oddities are that Tennessee Williams first published story was in Weird Tales, and William Burroughs’ in Black Mask. Gives the whole Black Mask Boys a whole new connotation.
September 10th, 2009 at 7:06 am
My first reaction to reading about William Burroughs being in Black Mask is to say I don’t recall his work in the 340 issues published during the magazines lifetime, 1920-1951.
However, there was a 341st issue published in August 1974 and that is where Burroughs appeared.
A couple years ago I had an interesting conversation with a scholar who was writing a book about Ernest Hemingway’s magazine stories. He said while doing his research he had found papers proving that Hemingway had submitted work to the pulps in the 1920’s. I think he was referring to ADVENTURE MAGAZINE. I keep hoping to read more about this very interesting theory but so far nothing has been published.